Extra! Extra! You don't have to pay extra to get Wall Street Journal content on your iPhone.
Good news for news junkies and anyone who can still stomach reading about the stock market: The Wall Street Journal just took the wraps off an eponymous iPhone app, offering news, video, and even podcasts. Better still, there's no charge for the app--or the content.
That may surprise Journal subscribers who pay a little more than $100 per year for unrestricted Web access. But it puts the app on an even footing with The New York Times and USA Today apps, among others, which also provide news at no charge.
The Journal app bears a striking resemblance to the Times app, with a five-icon toolbar that spans the bottom of the screen and a banner ad just above that. (Hey, somebody has to foot the bill.)
But this isn't just the Times repackaged. For one thing, the Journal app seems to load much faster than the notoriously pokey Times, and it sports prominent buttons for Video and WSJ Radio.
The latter consists of a two-minute podcast that starts streaming immediately when you tap through. But it lacks a time stamp, so there's no way to know without listening if it's any newer than the last podcast you played.
As for the videos: they flat-out refused to play, though we'll cut the app some slack on its first day; no doubt looky-loos have stampeded the Journal's servers.
Other amenities include a button to save articles for future reference and another to e-mail them to friends. Plus, you can customize the toolbar with any of 16 icons, giving you one-tap access to sections like Tech, Opinion, and Barron's.
Thus, despite a few early kinks, the WSJ app is sure to delight the business crowd--especially considering that they don't have to tap their slush funds to get it.
Picture this: an HD DVD fan's ultimate nightmare.
(Credit: CNET Networks)Today's Wall Street Journal has an interview with Atsutoshi Nishida, Toshiba's chief executive, that's kind of interesting for what it doesn't say. The article's headline is "Toshiba's Plan for Life After HD DVD" and the Q&A appears in the "Boss Talk" column, which seems to put executives in a warm seat rather than a hot seat. By that I mean there are a couple of hard-hitting questions ("Isn't the loss of the format war a blow to Toshiba's strategy?), but after you're through with the piece, you get the feeling that the interviewer, Yukari Iwatani Kane, really let Mr. Nishida off the hook.
Personally, I don't really care how Mr. Nishida spends his free time, but I am kind of curious what his thought process was when he decided to go to war with Sony. If you remember, over a year ago there was actually a moment when Toshiba and Sony were in negotiations to settle, but in the end they just couldn't come to an agreement on a unified format. I would have asked Mr. Nishida whether he regrets not making a deal earlier--and why he thought he could win in the first place. I also would have inquired what his plans were for a standalone Toshiba Blu-ray player. I mean, if you're going to ask him what Toshiba's plans are for life after HD DVD, you've got to ask if a Blu-ray player is in the works--especially a BD-Rom drive for Toshiba's laptops. Make him answer the question, right?
Well, without having the question asked, Mr. Nishida did answer in so many words that no Blu-ray player was imminent. He basically said that Toshiba would combat Blu-ray by selling upconverting DVD players that would cost less than Blu-ray players and be just as good. The exact quote: "And we're going to improve this [upconverting feature] even more, so that consumers won't be able to tell the difference from HD DVD images." That so? Well, what was the point of the war in the first place then? Jeez, Louise.
Anyway, I don't expect to see a Toshiba Blu-ray player in 2008, but Toshiba may change its tune in 2009. What do you guys think? Can Sony and Blu-ray be beat by cheaper upconverting players? Is DVD still the future?
(Credit:
Apple Computer)
The Apple iPod is, far and away, the most popular MP3 player on the market--less a product and more a way of life for many people. But just how reliable a product is it? That's the question posed by Nick Wingfield's article in today's Wall Street Journal. "When iPods Die" (which, like most WSJ content, is locked behind the paper's subscriber firewall) compiles some compelling iPod war stories. Among the frustrated 'Pod users chronicled is Tom Westrup of Austin, Texas, who--after suffering from repeated freeze-ups during playback--is currently awaiting his fifth replacement iPod. There's also New York software developer Bill Torpey, who shocked his daughter's malfunctioning iPod back to life--albeit temporarily--by slamming it down on his desk.
Those stories jibe with issues we've seen as well. Along with freeze-ups (requiring the need to constantly reset the device) and ever-shrinking battery life, hard drive failures are a frequent culprit. CNET Senior Editor Dan Ackerman was able to revitalize an old (out-of-warranty) iPod with a DIY hard drive replacement--though it lasted only six months before the dreaded "click of death" returned. Another editor was able to persuade the local Apple Store to give him a replacement iPod at a reduced cost--a kindly Genius Bar denizen took pity on the fact that his warranty had expired only a few days earlier.
Of course, we're not counting the incident where yet another colleague destroyed his iPod in a freak drinking-game accident (don't ask). And that raises a good point: These are portable devices, after all, and they take a lot more abuse than most stationary stay-at-home products. It goes without saying that the flash-based Nano and Shuffle models are certainly a better choice for active travelers. For instance, the aluminum skin found on the second-generation Nano has gone a long way to toughening up those models while eliminating the scratching problems found on the earlier plastic-faced versions. On the other hand, like any hard drive, the ones found in the full-size iPods can take only so much jostling, dropping, and hitting before they give up the ghost.
For its part, Apple claims the iPod failure rate is "less than 5 percent," a figure that a company spokesman calls "extremely low" compared to industry averages. And, indeed, the players' continued mega-success--70 million sold since 2001, according to the Journal article--would seem to indicate that the allure of an iPod still far outweighs its drawbacks. But in an age where a single YouTube video can rocket a consumer complaint from anecdotal obscurity to viral ubiquity, such complaints represent a possible crack in the iPod's armor. Whether that will translate into success for the army of competitors trying to assail Apple's massive 75 percent market share remains an open question.
- prev
- 1
- next
